Fredericksburg Lodge No. 794, A.F. & A.M.
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
traces its history to 1897 when a warrant of dispensation was granted by the Grand Lodge of Texas Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. The first worshipful master, D. C. Darroch, was installed by Neal Caldwell, deputy district grand master of the 47th Masonic District. Members joined from willow Creek, Kerrville, and Johnson City, and first met in the Schandua Building. In 1910 the Otto Kolmeier building located on East Main Street was acquired as the second home for the Lodge, and was shared with the Eastern Star organization. The Lodge moved to the Beckmann Building on West Main Street in 1925. Lodge meetings were held on the first floor, and the second floor housed Eastern Star meetings. The cornerstone for a new Lodge building was laid in 1963 at South Adams and Hale streets. Lodge members maintain a strong tradition of supporting education. An award named for Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar has been given annually, in addition to a scholarship. Many charitable causes have received assistance from the Masons, who continue to serve the community as they have for more than a century. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered by dispensation from the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1897, this Masonic lodge drew its first members from Fredericksburg and the surrounding Hill Country communities, meeting at first in the Schandua Building. Over the decades it moved through a series of Main Street homes — sharing quarters with the Eastern Star — before laying the cornerstone of its own building in 1963. The lodge built a lasting tradition of scholarships and charitable giving in its community.
Why it matters
Fraternal lodges like this one were engines of civic life and mutual aid in small-town America, quietly funding schools and charity for over a century.
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Related people
- · D. C. Darroch
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wunderlich Houses
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When Adolph Wunderlich married Martha Schumann in 1883, he built the smaller of these two Gillespie County homes, joining log and stone; as the family grew, he added a larger limestone house in 1892. On the surrounding farm he raised cotton, corn, sugarcane for molasses, and grapes for wine. His five children walked 2.5 miles to the Live Oak School, where lessons were taught in German, and the family held the land until 1956.
Market Square (Mark Platz)
Fredericksburg, TX
From Fredericksburg's founding in 1846, Market Square—Marktplatz to the German settlers—stood at the town's center, then still ringed by heavy forest. The octagonal Vereins Kirche rose the next year in the middle of Main Street, serving at once as church, school, meeting hall, and a refuge in case of raids, while a jail and public schoolhouse followed in the 1850s. Rebuilt in the 1930s as a pioneer memorial, the church became the county's first museum and library, and the square remains the community's gathering place.
Heinrich Bierschwale House
Fredericksburg, TX
German immigrant Heinrich Bierschwale built this two-story stone house in 1872–73 while teaching in the rural schools of Gillespie and Mason counties; he later served as county and district clerk. The home's vernacular stonework, bracketed porch columns, and six-over-six windows reflect the craftsmanship German settlers brought to the Texas Hill Country. Bierschwale and his wife Margarete raised nine children here, and the house has stayed in the family for well over a century.
Fredericksburg College Building
Fredericksburg, TX
Erected by the German Methodist Mission Conference of Texas and Louisiana, Fredericksburg College opened in 1876 as a hall of higher learning for the German immigrant community and beyond, drawing students from as far away as Galveston. At its peak it enrolled 250 students, some of them local boys who walked ten miles a day to attend. The college itself lasted only until 1884, but its hand-cut stone building has served the public schools ever since.